The first heavy week of the new fall season includes two shows based on real people — daytime talk show host Dr. Phil and high-powered fixer/defense attorney Mark Geragos. In one case, reality bites; in the other, it nibbles.

Every year we wonder how long it will take for the fall season’s first lousy show to emerge. Now we have our answer: Tuesday, Sept. 20. That’s the day the new CBS show “Bull” will premiere, and given how bad the pilot is, it should be canceled by Wednesday.

Then again, I suppose “Dr Phil” fans will tune in, so make that: canceled by Thursday.

“Bull” (sometimes they make it so easy, but let’s not go there) is based on an earlier part of Phil McGraw’s career, when he was a top-notch jury consultant. Lawyers would hire him because he could suss out which potential jurors might be favorable to his client’s case and which might be impossible to win over.

Michael Weatherly (deeply missed on “NCIS”) plays Dr. Jason Bull, who gets hired as a jury consultant after the son of a law firm’s wealthy client is charged with the murder of a young woman. Bull describes Brandon Peters (Luke Slattery, “The Family”) as a defendant “with a boy-band haircut and pimp sneakers,” and has a badly dressed gay stylist named Chunk (Chris Jackson, “Tracers”) give the kid a makeover. I note that the guy’s gay only because the character is such an anachronistic stereotype and because Bull brags that Chunk is his “gay best friend.”

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But it will take more than a haircut and preppy wardrobe to get Brandon off. That’s where Bull’s genius comes in. He knows which juror will be the persuader once the case goes to the jury.

All of this sounds workable because it is. The problem is that the actual writing is horrendous, unintentionally hilarious, and the setups are either predictable or so far out in left field that viewers will be annoyed because the writers have failed to lay a proper foundation, as real-life lawyers would say.

Naturally, Bull locks horns, as it were, with the high-powered defense attorney, Clyde Rutledge (Peter Francis James, “Law & Order: SVU”), a former U.S. attorney general, who huffs that he’s tried hundreds of cases without the aid of a flaky psychologist.

“A trial is not a popularity contest,” he thunders at one point. Where have you heard that one before? Better to ask, where haven’t you heard that one before?

Nice, except that in the real world, hiring a trial consultant for a high-visibility trial, especially when the parents of the defendant are loaded, is not exactly on the same level as Columbus telling Ferdinand and Isabella that the world is round.

Created by Dr. Phil and Paul Attanasio, the show drops little breadcrumbs to remind us of the co-creator’s future as a daytime-TV mouthpiece. These include a stem-winder by Bull directed at the defendant’s father, telling him that “you basically told (Brandon) he wasn’t worth your time, and now he’s lived up to your expectations.”

The one thing no one apparently thought of is that if you’re going to call your show “Bull,” you’d be well advised to make sure it’s too good for critics to use the word to describe it.

Photo: Eli Joshua Ade, Associated Press

Daniel Sunjata and Piper Perabo in “Notorious.”

Daniel Sunjata and Piper Perabo in “Notorious.”

“Notorious,” premiering Thursday, Sept. 22, on ABC, is the better of the two new shows, and not just because it couldn’t be worse than “Bull.”

Jake Gregorian (Daniel Sunjata, “Rescue Me”), whose character is apparently named after either chants or a calendar, plays a wily, expensive and highly successful lawyer for the rich and infamous, like Oscar Keaton (Kevin Zegers, “Gracepoint”), a star athlete accused of a hit-and-run accident in which a 15-year-old kid is critically injured. If Jake seems to evoke either Olivia Pope or Ray Donovan, that’s probably because he’s supposed to.

Let me stop right there, because this is about the point at which I wish creators Josh Berman and Allie Hagan had stopped before they surrendered to ABC’s penchant for overheated, oversexed, over-plotted and under-believable melodrama.

Alas, no such luck. Things become increasingly complicated. Most of the complications are limited to the pilot episode’s story line and involve sex. But one is not: Jake and Julia constantly and unapologetically use each other to advance their respective career interests. She ambushes him on TV, or seems to. Turns out he’s been in on it all along. He uses the TV show to shift blame from his client to another person. She’s part of the deal, even though she’s booked the other person on the show.

Lawyers and journalists are even less trustworthy in the eyes of many Americans than politicians and con artists. “Notorious” tells us why.

Admittedly, the collusive relationship between Jake and Julia is a useful plot mechanism. It might even be credible if it weren’t for the fact the rest of the story is so junked up with eyebrow-raisers.

Ultimately, the real reason “Notorious” is at least watchable is the cast. Perabo and Sunjata are magnetic in whatever they do, and they have great chemistry. Yes, they deserve better than “Notorious,” but they’re the primary reason it’s likely to be a hit for ABC.

Weatherly is a solid actor as well, but his performance in “Bull” isn’t enough to overcome that show’s bad writing.